FLEX TIME LOUISE LEHRMAN VISITING SENIOR FELLOW
Focus of Scholar’s Talk: Alexander Hamilton
I
N THE LIFE of our nation’s
on the islands of Nevis and St. Croix in the British West Indies, where he became an illegitimate
Brunswick welcomed the
orphan at the age of 11 and was
financial founding father,
award-winning biographer,
forced to take his first job as an
Alexander Hamilton, early
journalist, and senior editor
accounting clerk.
experience made a defining
at National Review to Baker
difference, according to historian Richard Brookhiser.
He recounted Hamilton’s
Theater in April.
courageous military career in the
Brookhiser — the 2008
Richard Brookhiser
Revolutionary War after arriving in America — and his restorative and profitable work as the first Secretary of the Treasury, under
winner of the National Medal of the Humanities,
President Washington. Brookhiser, too, told the story
and a 2011 recipient of a
of Hamilton’s extramarital affair
Guggenheim Fellowship
with a married woman, Maria
— was this year’s Louise
Reynolds, and his hateful rival-
Lehrman Visiting Senior
ries with Thomas Jefferson and
Fellow.
Aaron Burr.
The Fellowship, estab-
It was Burr, of course, who
lished in 2013 by a gift from
fatally wounded Hamilton in a
the Lehrman Institute,
duel at dawn on July 11, 1804, in
engages experts in American
Weehawken, New Jersey.
History to visit Brunswick,
Brookhiser, the author a
instilling in students a
number of books and biog-
greater understanding of the
raphies about American
rights, privileges, and duties
historical figures, including
of American citizenship.
George Washington, James
The author of Alexander
Madison, and Abraham Lincoln,
Hamilton, American rooted
has, himself, visited the site of
his Lehrman lecture in
the Hamilton-Burr duel.
a careful chronicle of his
“When you look to the
subject’s origins, accom-
east, you see all of Manhattan,
plishments, and failures.
from the Battery all the way
Brookhiser detailed Hamilton’s upbringing
up through Midtown and to Riverside Church, the Manhattan mountain range of skyscrapers and apartment buildings,” Brookhiser said. “I knew that if Hamilton had seen that now, he would say, ‘This is why I came here, this is what I worked to build. Use it.’”
44 | TIMES
OF BRUNSWICK • SPRING 2018